xfce4.4.0 doesn't find iceauth

Hello everyone,

I'm new here, I've been using Linux for just under a year now. I use Slackware 11 on my machine and decided to play around with the unstable (-current) release. Some of you may know in this release the distro is upgrading to modular xorg packages (X6.9 -> X7.2).

I've used xfce4.4.0 (built from source) on X6.9 with no issues but with this upgrade a small issue came up:When I

startx

subsequently xfce tries to launch iceauth which lives in

/usr/bin/iceauth

but xfce tries to launch the path

/usr/X11R6/bin/iceauth

obviously this causes problems!

In the meantime I did the following:

ln -s /usr/bin/iceauth /usr/X11R6/bin/iceauth

and it seems to hold up!

I'm not certain which end the problem comes from, xfce's init scripts or slackware's packaging? should I report this bug here?

Re: xfce4.4.0 doesn't find iceauth

/usr/X11R6/bin is the location of X Window binaries according to the FHS The /usr/X11R6 is an optional hierarchy, but if it exists there must be symlinks /usr/bin/X11 -> /usr/X11R6/bin, /usr/lib/X11 -> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11, and /usr/include/X11 -> /usr/X11R6/include/X11.

Even though /usr/X11R6 is optional, I can't recall ever seeing a distro that didn't use it. Sometimes you may see /usr/X11R6 as a symlink to /usr (e.g., Gentoo). Since /usr/X11R6 is optional, neither Slackware nor the installer is really wrong and it's not a bug. The Xfce installer is recognizing that /usr/X11R6 is the most common location for X Window components.

There are many other that assume /usr/X11R6 exists and have this path hard coded. Unless you are building everything on your box from scratch and fix these hard coded paths, you may want to take the Gentoo approach and create the symlink /usr/X11R6 -> /usr.

Re: xfce4.4.0 doesn't find iceauth

The FHS hasn't been updated to account for release 7 obviously. That's why I have to sed configure scripts and Makefiles to get rid of the reference to X11R6 on my box (I use CLFS) . The X11R6 is included in the FHS for historical purposes, technically it should be in /usr/local or even /opt. It doesn't really satisfy the requirements for installation in the /usr hierarchy.

Why "everyone" hard codes the /usr/X11R6 hierarchy is a question for the package maintainers. Especially considering it's an optional hierarchy. In any event it doesn't change the fact that it is the most common location for X Windows today. If you build everything (with a few exceptions) by hand, it's not really that problematic. XFCE-4.4.0 is easy enough to build from source. It really doesn't take that long. Here are some instructions -> http://cblfs.cross-lfs.org/index.php/Xfce if you're interested.